idents were particularly susceptible, foreigners being comparatively
exempt. The epidemic terminated about the 30th of September. Since that
time the sweating sickness has never reappeared in England; but in the
beginning of the eighteenth century a disease very similar in symptoms
and course broke out in Picardy, in Northern France. Toward the end of
the century it spread to the South of France, and since that time has
appeared epidemically, 195 distinct outbreaks having been observed in
the course of one hundred and sixty-nine years, from 1618 to 1787. The
disease has frequently appeared in Italy since 1755, and in various
parts of Germany since 1801. In Belgium it has been observed in a few
places within the present century (Rohe).

Chronologic Table of the Principal Plagues.--In December, 1880, H. P.
Potter, F.R.C.S., published a chronologic table of some of the
principal plagues on record. In comments on his table, Potter says that
he has doubtless included mention of many plagues which, although
described under that name, are probably a dissimilar disease, writers
having applied the terms pestilential and pestilent in a generic sense
to diseases specifically different. It must also be remembered that, in
some cases, death must have been due to famine, want, and privation,
which are so frequently coexistent with pestilence. Following the idea
of Hecker, the dancing manias have been included in this table.

{table omitted}

Small-pox.--From certain Chinese records it appears that small-pox, or
a disease with similar symptoms, was known in China before the
Christian era, and it was supposed to have been known at a very early
period in India. Most likely it was introduced into Europe in the
second century by a Roman army returning from Asia. Before the sixth
century, the terrible century of the great plague, there seem to be no
records of small-pox or other eruptive fevers. Neither Hippocrates,
Galen, nor the Greek physicians who practiced at Rome, mention
small-pox, although it is now believed that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
died of this disease. According to Dupony, the first document
mentioning variola was in 570 A.D., by Marius, a scholar of Avenches,
in Switzerland. ("Anno 570, morbus validus cum profluvio ventris, et
variola, Italiam Galliamque valde affecit.") Ten years later Gregory of
Tours describes an epidemic with all the symptoms of small-pox in the
fifth reign of King Childebert (580); it started in